Medic Guide
' ' This is the medic Guide for The Cooler Server's Arma III Operations. The purpose of this guide is to teach aspiring medics everything they need to know about how to be an effective medic during Ops. If you want to become a medic, you need to read this guide in its entirety. I know it is long, but it will give you a very deep understanding of how and why medics operate the way they do. Note, this guide does not cover things such as controls in game, what types of bandages to use for different wounds, or how to actually use the medical system. Instead, this guide will focus on what medics do in order to safely heal people. It assumes you already know the basics of how the Ace medical system works. To see how the Ace medical system works, go to THIS LINK. We use the ACE Advanced Medical System and it can be kind of confusing. Feel free to ask people questions on Teamspeak or on the website. TO SEE LARGER IMAGES CLICK THEM The basics Gear CLICK HERE a link to our standard Medic loadout. It is designed to operate as a rifleman, but with the ability to provide significant medical support when needed. Note: As a medic, providing others with medical support is your primary job. Your gun is only for personal defense. Responsibilities The primary responsibility of medics are fairly straightforward. Medics need to give medical attention to their fellow operators when they get hurt. This includes things like bandaging them, giving them morphine, epinephrine, blood, and fixing their legs if they break them. The secondary responsibilities of medics are a bit more complicated. These include things like retrieving casualties from dangerous positions, keeping yourself alive, exfiling casualties to a FOB (Forward Operating Base), and selecting LZ's (Landing Zones) for evac choppers. Situational Awareness Situational awareness plays a huge role in Arma. If you are situationally unaware, you may easily get yourself or your teammates killed. Do you best to keep tabs on your teammates and their movements so you can quickly respond to any injuries they sustain. Basically, act as the mom of the group. Keeping Track of Your Teammates (Being Mom) Keeping track of your teammates locations is extremely important in Arma, especially for medics. Sometimes people will go down and no one will realize it and they end up bleeding out. While our battle buddy system (Brief description of Battle Budy System) usually prevents this, it can still happen. Sometimes battle buddy’s get separated or both battle buddy’s may go down at the same time. To prevent this, you can periodically remind people to stick with their battle buddies. However, sometimes the responsibility of realizing someone is down falls to the medic. To do this, you need to be constantly listening to who in your squad is talking and what they are saying. If someone announces that they are clearing a building and you don’t hear anything from them for 60 seconds, then they might be down. Try to contact them via local chat and radio. If they don’t respond, assume they are down and need medical attention. Also, if during a firefight you don’t hear a specific person say anything for a couple of minutes, they could be down. Again, try to contact them via local chat or radio. If they don’t respond, assume they are down and that they need medical attention. Formation Position As a medic, you are one of the most valuable members of your team. As such, you should take every precaution you can to stay alive. One of the best ways to stay alive is to carefully manage your position. As a rule of thumb, you should always be in the back middle of your team (see image to left). There are many jobs that your teammates will do that are too dangerous for you to do. For example, you should never be in front when clearing buildings, act as point man, or be the first to cross an exposed area (ex. roads, alleys, etc). If someone gets injured doing these jobs, then you need to be alive to get them help, you are no use if you are dead. As a medic, your most important (and most dangerous) job is to retrieve injured patients. To do this safely, you will need the help of your teammates providing suppressing fire, and smoke grenades to mask your advance to the patient. Giving Orders to Those around You As a medic, you have the authority to tell others what to do so patients can be safely retrieved and successfully treated. If a friendly goes down while crossing a street, you NEED to coordinate a rescue. You CANNOT SAFELY RESCUE THEM YOURSELF. Ideally, you should to get someone (preferably a support gunner) to provide suppressing fire in the direction you are being engaged from. Note: Multiple people providing suppressing fire can be helpful, especially if you are being engaged by multiple hostiles from unknown positions. Once people have begun suppressing fire, you can deploy a smoke grenade and retrieve the patient. Getting Patients to Cover Ideally, there will be nearby cover that you can use to safely treat the patient once you retrieve them from where they were injured. If not, then you will have to use your best judgement as to how/if you are going to retrieve the patient. You may need to make the tough call and decide that someone is too exposed to safely retrieve. Remember,' you are not useful to your teammates if you're dead.' Proper Use of Smoke as Cover When retrieving patients, it is extremely important that you do so as safely as possible. One of the most effective ways to do this is to deploy (white) smoke grenades to cover your advance to the patient. Note: Use white smoke as it is generally accepted as covering smoke. If you use other colors, such as red, Air Team may think that you are a CAS target. Once you throw your smoke grenades, wait for them to expand and retrieve the patient. Proper Use of Suppressing Fire as Cover In addition to or instead of covering smoke, suppressing fire can be used to create a safer environment to retrieve a casualty. Get someone near you (preferably a support gunner) and tell them to lay down suppressing fire in the direction where the casualty was shot from. Once you can’t hear much enemy fire, go ahead and try to retrieve the casualty. Triage Procedure Tactical Field Care uses Triage as a core component of keeping units in the fight, it requires casualties and those around them to assess injuries and prioritize them by threat to life so medics can save as many personnel as possible. Who should I care for first? Priority goes to those with the most severe injury counts (I.E. Those with the most limbs wounded and bleeding are to be taken care of first), stop the bleeding of all patients before moving on to other injuries (I.E. Stop bleeding with bandages before giving blood). How much should I care for them? Prioritize medical supplies by stopping any bleeding as soon as possible by using bandages, then follow up with blood and personal aid kits (if they have a mobility impairment). Care under Fire Neutralize the threat if possible before caring for any casualties, if not possible, remove casualty to safer location. IF AT ALL POSSIBLE have others bring wounded to you behind cover. When Not under Fire Triage any and all casualties, if there are mass casualties have them self assess injuries and bandage themselves if possible. Ensure there are no unconscious casualties in the Casualty Collection Point as they get priority. Refer to "How much should I care for them?" for priority of injuries. Exfiling Casualties This portion of the guide is written in order of most preferred to last resort. You will usually want to exfil casualties when you are in a heavy firefight and have multiple casualties. These casualties will typically have broken legs and will be combat ineffective. Via Helicopter Exfiling via helicopter is usually the preferred method of extraction. The pros of extracting via helicopter is that it is very fast so you can move casualties far away from the combat zone and helicopters provide a good deal of protection for those riding in them. The cons are they can be difficult to land in small spaces (such as in urban environments) and that coordinating the exfil can be difficult. Making the Call To call for a medivac via helicopter, you need to get in contact with the JTAC. To do this, either find them on the ground, or have your fireteam leader radio them. Before you contact them, you need to have a suggested LZ (landing zone) marked on the map make sure it is in side channel, or no one else can see it! The JTAC or pilot may change the LZ based on what they think is best, but giving them a recommendation makes their job a lot easier. Also, make sure you know how many people need to be extracted. This number is however many casualties you have, plus yourself and maybe another medic if the squad can spare them. Once you have a suggested LZ and know how many need extraction, get in contact with the JTAC, tell them the LZ and how many need extraction and they will handle the rest. Via Truck Exfiling via truck is typically the second best method of extraction. One pro of extracting via truck is that they are pretty quick so you can move casualties away from the combat zone in only a few minutes. Another pro is that (depending on the vehicle) trucks are typically fairly heavily armored and can easily fit into small alleys. Also, coordinating extract via truck is pretty quick and easy. The cons are they they are very exposed while in transit because one guy with an rpg on a nearby roof can destroy the entire truck. Also, it can be difficult to get to the truck if it is not near you already, especially when you have casualties with broken legs. Making the Call To call for a medivac via truck, you need to get in contact with your fireteam leader. Before you contact them, make sure that you have a suggested route for extract and a clear location to move to once you are in the truck. Also, make sure that you know how many to extract (don’t forget to include yourself) so you can get a big enough truck to fit everyone. Once you have a suggested route and the number of people that need extraction, tell your team leader and they will help coordinate everything from there. On Foot Exfiling on foot is typically the last resort for extraction. If you are extracting on foot, odds are “shit’s fucked yo”. The only pro of extracting on foot is that it is very straightforward. The cons are that you are very slow and very exposed while you are combat ineffective. If you have to exfil on foot, try to get somewhere safe ASAP and holdout for someone to pick you up via truck or helicopter. Be sure someone in your group is monitoring command frequency to help coordinate your rescue. Making the Call (because everyone else is dead) To coordinate an extract on foot, the first step is to establish some sort organization within your group. If you are extracting on foot, then you probably don’t have a leader and you aren’t in contact with any other groups. First, get somewhere safe. Next, designate a leader and make sure they get on command frequency. Finally, try to follow your planned exfil route. Note: The exfil route is only to get you somewhere safe enough to get picked up by air or truck and taken to an actually safe location. Conclusion Now that you have read this guide you have a solid understanding of how and why medics operate the way they do. If you have any questions, look around this wiki for other guides or just ask someone on Teamspeak, or on the forums. Good luck and have fun. We look forward to operating with you. Category:Role Guide